Workers living with chronic pain routinely hide their condition from employers and push through their discomfort to appear fully functional, according to new research led by the University of Delaware. The study, published in the Academy of Management Journal, found that the problem is not simply that individuals experience pain, but that organizational norms intensify and reproduce that pain over time.
The research drew on a survey of 66 workers from a wide range of occupations. Despite differences in their jobs, participants faced similar pressures: their bodies were expected to conform to a standard of uninterrupted functionality. The lead author, Beth Schinoff, an assistant professor of management in UD's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, described this as an assumption embedded in how modern workplaces are built.
"People feel like they can't talk about their pain because it signals that they're not able to meet expectations, even when those expectations are unrealistic," Schinoff said.
The study examined what Schinoff calls the concept of the ideal worker body, the implicit assumption that employees can perform consistently without interruption, discomfort or visible limitation. Whether that meant standing for hours, typing continuously or sitting through long meetings, the workplaces in the study assumed bodies that could, as Schinoff put it, "do what the job requires, when the job requires it, without visible struggle."
"We don't think about the ways in which our bodies are being used, or the way in which organizations are asking us to use our bodies, especially because most people's work is repetitive in some way," Schinoff said. "It really does have detrimental effects on our bodies."
The researchers found that concealment comes at a cost. By pushing themselves to meet expectations, workers often make their pain worse, which then increases the pressure to keep hiding it. Schinoff described this as a cycle of pain and shame, where "workers push through pain to appear capable, which worsens their condition, which then increases the pressure to hide it."
Small workplace requirements that might seem trivial to others, such as keeping a camera on during virtual meetings or sitting upright through a long call, can be physically taxing for someone in chronic pain. Because such norms are rarely questioned, workers who cannot meet them tend to interpret their difficulties as personal failures rather than as a consequence of how the workplace is structured.
"These expectations feel natural, which makes it even harder to challenge them," Schinoff noted.
The study also found that because productivity, commitment and professionalism are tied to bodily norms that are almost never acknowledged openly, workers have few avenues to raise the issue without risking how they are perceived by managers and colleagues. As Schinoff explained, workplaces do not just assume an ideal worker, they "assume an ideal worker body."
The research adds to a growing body of work on how organizational culture shapes physical health outcomes, and places the focus not on individual coping strategies but on the structural conditions that make disclosure feel impossible for many workers.
